Japan earthquake: police handed tens of millions of yen from devastated area

Tens of millions of yen in cash and hundreds of locked safes have been handed in to police stations across northern Japan by people sifting through the debris of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Japanese police, wearing suits to protect them from radiation, search for victims inside the deserted evacuation zone, established for a 20 kilometre radius around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plantPhoto: AP

Police are storing the safes in the hope that their owners can be traced, although a mere 10 per cent of owners have been reunited with their lost valuables to date, officers said. With more than 13,000 people confirmed dead so far and another 14,377 still listed as missing, it is likely that many will never be returned to their rightful owners.

Police in several of the hardest-hit cities said they were considering forcing safes open in the hope they will also contain birth certificates or other identifying documents.

Large parts of northern Japan were hit by another major aftershock on Monday yesterday afternoon. The magnitude 7 quake triggering a mudslide that buried at least four people in the town of Iwaki and halted repair work at the Fukushima reactors. A warning for a tsunami was issued for the east coast of Japan but then withdrawn, while around 220,000 households experienced power outages.

Yesterday afternoon Japan observed a minute's silence to mark one month since the devastating earthquake and tsunami struck. The crisis is far from over as the company in charge of the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant is still injecting nitrogen to reduce the risk of further hydrogen explosions and water is being pumped into the reactors to keep them cool.

Even when Tepco brings the plant under control, some estimates say it will take decades to carry out the decommissioning process and reduce radiation levels around the plant to acceptable levels.

The government has imposed a 12-mile exclusion zone around the Fukushima plant and told people living in a second ring between 12 and 18 miles of the facility to remain indoors as much as possible. With the plant continuing to release radioactivity into the atmosphere, however, the government will expand the evacuation zone in some areas that are found to have high levels of radiation.

The authorities also intend to impose a law banning people from entering the no-go district around the plant to deter residents from returning to their homes to try to salvage their possessions.

In addition, the government will prohibit the planting of rice in fields that are found to be contaminated with more than 5,000 becquerels of radioactive caesium per kilogram of soil.